Ministers face more trouble over home seller packs in Lords

Ministers face more trouble over home seller packs in Lords

The government's travails over the introduction of the controversial home information packs (Hips) continued yesterday, despite its defeat of a last-minute Conservative motion calling for them to be dumped. Opposition peers are hopeful they are on course to defeat the government in a separate House of Lords vote next Tuesday, although the motion will not kill the proposals.

The scheme, which aims to speed up purchases, cut the number of failed transactions and encourage home owners to reduce energy consumption, will require sellers to provide information on the property and an energy performance certificate from June 1. But opening yesterday's debate, Michael Gove, the Conservative housing spokesman, predicted that Hips would be "the biggest and most jarring" intervention in the property market since Nigel Lawson, then Conservative chancellor, warned he was abolishing mortgage tax relief.

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"They will do nothing to take the strain out of home-buying and only add cost and complexity to the housing market ... Ministers have botched this process from beginning to end," Mr Gove said. Predicting that the scheme would slow down the housing market because of a lack of trained energy inspectors, he added: "Let me make ministers an offer - if they drop all the unnecessary bureaucracy and concentrate on delivering the one good thing in this package, the energy performance certificate (EPCs), we will help them out of the mess they are in."

But the housing minister, Yvette Cooper, argued that it made no sense to separate the EPCs because the rest of the pack merely consisted of legal and search documents already required for a transaction, but usually spread out over the buying process.

She told the Conservatives: "When you have had the choice to choose between backing the National Association of Estate Agents or backing Friends of the Earth, you have chosen and we have seen which side you are really on."

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